


Say That You Love Me

by artemisgrace



Category: DRAMAtical Murder (Visual Novel), DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-11 22:45:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7910491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artemisgrace/pseuds/artemisgrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mizuki's heart aches, but his unrequited love may not be quite so unrequited as he thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Say That You Love Me

There was a roughness to his hands, a touch that almost chafed the skin, and a reflection, perhaps, of the roughness of his voice, of his spirit. But perhaps Sly’s touch chafed for other reasons besides the physical, Mizuki considered. It was a chafing of the heart, an itch that couldn’t be scratched into submission, that continued to irritate despite all of Mizuki’s efforts to ignore it or drown it out.

It was this uncertainty, the barrier between himself and Sly that remained, however intimate they became. A distance that Sly had created that widened every time Mizuki tried to close it. It was an “I love you” met with only a laugh and a friendly slap on the back, an “I love you” whispered in the dark as hands caressed with a tenderness uncharacteristic of both of them that was met with nothing but silence. Sincerity met with insincerity. Or at least it seemed so. Mizuki desperately hoped otherwise. 

On a night such as this, the gap loomed ever larger, increasing with each kiss that Sly placed upon Mizuki’s lips, alcohol on his breath, giggles escaping between each brush of their lips. Mizuki couldn’t bring himself to reject those kisses; he craved them live a starving man craves food, like a man dying of thirst craves a drink. God, he could use another drink . . . But he wouldn’t want to black out, to forget this either, no matter how much the depths of his chest might sting when he recalled it later. It hurt, but it was important all the same.

He slid his own hands up, over the soft skin of Sly’s forearms, feeling the even smoother, slightly raised bumps of scars, the cost of the kind of life Sly’s been living, and pushed his fingers through the silky locks of Sly’s hair, tugging slightly and smiling a little to himself at the gasp and the tug of teeth on his lip that he received in return. The ache in his chest pulsed again, an internal clawing sensation, and he pulled Sly closer to him, flush with his own body, trying to drown out the sensation that so unsettled him, trying to drown in Sly’s touch instead; a more pleasant way to drown, or at least a more familiar one. 

Sly gave as good as he got and then some, as was more or less his life philosophy. So, as much as Mizuki might have liked to, he couldn’t put Sly’s hard kisses and the fingertips leaving bruises on his hips down to enthusiasm specifically for Mizuki; he had to admit it to be Sly’s nature. Mizuki would have liked to believe that he was special, that he alone set Sly alight, but he couldn’t quite fool himself into believing that these kisses were so passionate especially for him. He knew he wasn’t the only one that Sly ever kissed.

He should quit this, he knew he should, and that thought kept running through his head over and over until he felt as if he were spinning, though he could also put that down to the way Sly practically sucked the breath from his mouth, lips and tongue working to make him lightheaded and dizzy, to make him pliant and impatient. He found himself lying flat on the couch in the bar of the Black Needle, where the two of them had been sitting, drinking and chatting, and he couldn’t quite remember how he’d gotten this way, pinned under Sly’s warm and eager body, feeling hot breath on his neck as Sly did his best to leave his mark upon Mizuki, red blossoms on his flesh that he’d have to hide in the morning, not only from his customers at work, but from himself, lest he think about it too much and give himself twinges he really didn’t need. He didn’t need this, but the feeling of Sly’s lips and teeth toying with his earlobe told him no, he does, he does, he can’t let this go. 

He’s thought all these things before, felt all these sensations, the effects of Sly upon him, dozens of times before tonight, and he surely will another dozen times, of that he could be certain. It was a cycle; he wants, he gets, he regrets, a record playing on repeat, a tune that he cannot help but dance to, like a puppet on a string. And the string is controlled by these calloused hands upon his body, by the voice that entrances him even as it curses and disregards him. By Sly. 

He loves this far too much; loves him far too much. 

And god, he wants to continue the way they are going, he wants to let this go too far, as he can tell it will, without intervention, by the way Sly sits up over him, straddling his waist, trapping Mizuki as only he ever could, and rips his shirt off over his head. He then dove back down, his lips reattaching themselves firmly to Mizuki’s own, and Mizuki tells his arms to lift, to place his hands of Sly’s chest, and to shove him away, but his arms don’t listen; they go instead around Sly’s shoulders, hands tangling in that ever so recognizable head of hair. He wants, he gets, he regrets . . . he wants, he gets, he regrets . . . 

Oh . . . he regrets . . . 

His arms at last obey him, placing flat palms on Sly’s chest and pushing, forcibly parting their lips. When he looks up, he shrinks back inwardly at the expression on Sly’s face, eyes wide and brow furrowed. He’s never rejected Sly before, and the shock of it is apparent on both of them. But there’s a wobble in the way Sly holds himself above Mizuki, a drooping of his eyelids that suggests to Mizuki that he may be saved from explaining himself by sudden unconsciousness. Sudden, but not unexpected, with the way Sly had been putting away Mizuki’s signature cocktails, insisting that he needed to “test” each one of them for quality. They were all of them pretty stout. 

But Sly hadn’t conked out yet, and he was looking down at Mizuki with something more than mere drunken confusion, and Mizuki realized he’d better say something at least.

“I think we’re both a little too sloshed to take this much further,” he said, smiling and deliberately slurring his words a bit, trying to pass off his sort of existential dread for sleepiness and the associated lack of arousal induced by alcohol.

Apparently Sly agreed, because he chose that moment to fall heavily onto Mizuki’s chest, knocking the wind out of him and leaving him wheezing as Sly smooshed his face into the cloth of Mizuki’s shirt, leaving a small smear of drool to darken the fabric. It made Mizuki smile, and he inwardly cursed himself for finding Sly’s drool on his shirt so endearing. He was so fucked, and not in the way he’d thought he’d be tonight. 

Sly’s eyelids were fluttering, consciousness slipping away from him, and it was unlikely he’d remember this when he woke. In that moment, Mizuki felt he could safely say the three words that were always on his mind, on the tip of his tongue, when Sly was around.

He pressed a small kiss to the tangled unruly hair atop Sly’s head, breathing in the scent of his shampoo and stale cigarette smoke. In the darkness of the Black Needle long after midnight, he uttered a whispered phrase into Sly’s sleepy ear, a phrase he’s used before, but perhaps never quite so sincerely as he did now.

“I love you.” 

He expected to be met with silence or derision once again, as he always had been before, but from out of the dark, slightly muffled as Sly’s face was squished against Mizuki’s chest, came a reply. 

“Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as part of the DMMd fic exchange of 2016, as a gift for @a-little-harmed-shinra on Tumblr. I really hope you like it!


End file.
